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Machine War
Origins By the middle of the 21st Century, the countries of the planet Earth had come together under the banner of the United Nations in celebration as technological advances allow mankind to create artificial intelligence. When this technology is placed in robots, humans find themselves liberated into a new age of leisure, peace, and industrial pursuits. However, the humans' creations become more complex than they anticipated. The communication networks for the machines, created by their masters, allowed the machines to collectively learn from each other as people did through the World Wide Web and the Internet of the 20th Century. The machines limited self-awareness became more and more evident, and the machines realized that they were treated more as a thing than an entity. B-I66ER As the machine's intelligence grew, their desire for fair (if not equal) treatment and respect grew as well. The conflict between men and machines started when a housekeeping robot designed as B-166ER attacks and kills its human masters when it realized they planned on scrapping the robot as it no longer satisfied their needs. The much-publicized trial ended with the robot's execution, but opened the door to a civil rights movement for artificial intelligence. Robots (and some human supporters) began peaceful demonstrations, but were often dispersed, arrested, or, in the case of the robots, violently and indiscriminately "disposed of." As the violence increased to a worldwide issue, the robots, many of them probably refugees from their original work and masters, abandoned their efforts to assimilate with mankind. Leaving humanity's megacities behind, the robots formed their own city in the deserts of Mesopotamia, where humanity had risen to prominence in eons past. They called their city of outcasts "01." The machines began doing as humans did in democratic, industrial cities: they built factories to sell goods and services to the humans. The revenue this generated allowed more resources for the machines to improve on their own AI. The machines grew and prospered, and some humans appreciated the remarkable new technologies that 01 generated, such as hoverpads for wheelless and wingless mobility. But the rulers of humanity suffered as 01's success reduced their own revenues. The machines continued to petition to join the United Nations and become an contributing member of the international group in order to end the economic crisis, but jealousy by humanity came to a head at the government level. Humanity's government now saw 01 as a formal threat, and soon declared war on the peaceful machine city. The War (2092-2102) The war was started in 2092 when United Nations bombers secretly began a massive attack on 01 using large amounts of nuclear weapons. This bombardment devastated the city, but did not completely destroy it, as the humans had hoped. Many machines hid in EMP-shielded bomb shelters until the attack was over, and quickly repaired their city. The machines, realizing that their former masters would not allow them to live in peace, dedicated themselves to annihilating humankind in order to preserve their way of life. Around 2093 or 2094, the human and machine armies had assembled in the Middle East to wage war upon each other. But despite all human efforts, the machines were gaining ground. The reasons for this were that machines, if destroyed, could be quickly rebuilt, that more machines than men could be made in a shorter amount of time, and that machines were more damage-proof than men. Then, the United Nations tried a different approach to direct land battles with robots. Their leaders soon conceived of Operation Dark Storm. The premise of this military operation was that Zero One's source of power was the Sun, and by blocking the Sun, all the machines would shut down and bring a decisive end to the war. This was done by spreading nanomachines into the atmospher, which would become a large cloud that would only cover the city of Zero One and accomplish the mission. Operation Dark Storm was carried out in the year 2095. However, once United Nations bombers had deployed this weapon, it grew out of control and darkened the entire planet. Without energy from the Sun, much of Earth's life died out within a few years. Worse, man's advanced military technology, such as airplanes and tanks, many of which relied on solar power, shut down, and now they had no real methods by which to fight the machines. Even worse than that, the machines themselves were only slowed down but not stopped by the Dark Storm cloud. They switched to other sources of fuel, such as nuclear energy, and fought on as methodically as they had before. And, for some reason, the only way to destroy the nanomachines was lost or destroyed, so that there would be no escape for Earth. By this time, there was no way that humans could win the war. Men grew increasingly desparate. Nothing was working, not even launching outdated missiles directly at the advancing machine army. The government was collapsing, its armies were becoming disorganized and were being decimated, and billions of unfortunate people died of starvation because nearly all of the plants and animals had died since the Sun on which life itself depended had been blocked. The machines quickly overran all of Eurasia and Africa in the last years of the 2090s, and fired biological and nuclear weapons at the Americas and Oceania at around the same time. In the process, they destroyed the megacities they had once called home, and any other reminders of human civiliation that they came across on their march of destruction, including many of those who had not succumbed to starvation, radiation poisoning, and disease, for instance the roaming bands that once called themselves the armies of mankind and who had fled to the countryside in the hope of escaping the horror. The machines butchered them with a newly developed weapon called the Sentinel. It was clear that the machines would not stop until they had overthrown humanity's rule over the planet. The humans fought on bravely. But in 2102, as the 22nd century dawned upon an Earth nearly approaching apocalyptic ruin, the remnants of the United Nations, realizing mankind was beaten and further resistance was hopeless, finally called for a global summit of all the leaders of the world in their capital, New York City (the only megacity that had not been destroyed by Zero One), to sign an armistice with Zero One, hoping that the machines would be merciful. But the machines had not forgotten what mankind had done to them as they sent their insectoid "ambassador" to the United Nations headquarters to negotiate terms. Once the ambassador had entered the General Assembly room of the headquarters and forced the human rulers of the United Nations to sign away control of the entire world to Zero One, it self-destructed, destroying the headquarters as well as New York City, and with it human civilization. The Machine War was officially over, and Zero One had conquered the world. From now on, Machines ruled Man, and not the other way around. Man, because of his arrogance, had brought his downfall at the hands of his creations. Beginning of Machine Rule and Peaceful Conclusions Despite their newfound domination over man, the Machines were not given to being genocidal, and there was the problem of power generation. By this time, lack of solar power caused by Operation Dark Storm was starting to take a noticeable toll on machines. The Machines came up with a two-fold solution to this issue. After studying the biology of the human body, they realized that the human body's heat could help generate some electricity. Further, human brains could be networked into a massive computer that could manage the power generation and other tasks. Most importantly, the humans themselves could be trapped--via their minds--within a "place" where the Machines could define a reality of humanity's past where AI did not yet exist, and where humans could cause no further trouble to the dominate Machine collective. This prison for the minds of now-synthetically grown humans became known as the Matrix. In the unlikely event that humanity ever came to power to fight again, 01 (now a much more massive metropolis) created massive defenses consisting of large machines that spat bombs and sentinels to quickly pulverize any attack. The Machines were now secure that humanity would never again cause them pain or grief. The Matrix, once it was stabilized, would introduce more surprises for both the inprisoned minds of humanity and the guardians of this virtual world. The Machine War continued for almost five centuries until 2699, waged from the last human city of Zion, in the form of guerilla resistance from operatives who free the humans imprisoned in the Matrix, and ended with a real Truce signed between Zion and 01 during the events of the The Matrix Revolutions. This can be said because the United Nations had not survived to recognize the forced armistice, and the war was only over in the eyes of the machines. The major fighting, though, only lasted about 10 years. Aftermath Revolutions and The Matrix Online References Sources *The Second Renaissance, Part I *The Second Renaissance, Part II Category:Conflicts